The 45th Vancouver International Film Festival, held from October 1-11, announced its audience award winners across multiple programming sections. Peter Farrelly’s ‘I Play Rocky,’ a film depicting Sylvester Stallone’s journey in creating and starring in the original ‘Rocky,’ secured the Audience Award in the Galas & Special Presentations category.
Banchi Hanuse’s documentary ‘Ceremony’ won in the Showcase category after previously receiving the juried Tides Award. The film examines the disappearance of the ooligan, a fish of cultural importance to the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola, and the community’s response to investigating the species’ decline. Louis Clichy’s animated feature ‘Iron Boy,’ addressing disability and agricultural modernization themes, claimed the Panorama prize. The Vanguard award went to Fernanda Salgado’s ‘Ana, En Passant,’ an animated drama centered on a young Black woman returning to her grandmother’s hometown in Brazil.
Additional category winners were announced across the festival’s diverse sections. Cody Lightning’s ‘Smudge the Blades,’ a hockey drama featuring Indigenous youth in Northern Alberta, received the Northern Lights award. Other honorees included Faraz Shariat’s ‘Prosecution’ in Focus on New German Cinema: Extreme Tension, Asmahan Bkerat’s ‘Concrete Land’ in Insights, Otilia Portillo Padua’s ‘Daughters of the Forest’ in Spectrum, Rebecca Tansley’s ‘Tenor: My Name Is Parti’ in Portraits, and Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané’s ‘Jim Queen’ in Altered States.
The festival presented 162 feature films and 91 short films from 76 countries in total, with audiences selecting 10 titles as favorites across various programming categories.
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